


shake the teeth

by bunnypirate (evil_bunny_king), evil_bunny_king



Series: Salt Water [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:14:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21517300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/bunnypirate, https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil_bunny_king
Summary: It's been five years, and she could be a dream, a ghost; but it's real enough. It's real enough.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Series: Salt Water [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1747756
Comments: 14
Kudos: 111





	1. Reunion: part 1

**Author's Note:**

> J E Sund - I will smile when I think of you
> 
> (Yes, I'm still obsessed with this song)

Claude.

  
.  
  


When he sees her again that first time at the goddess tower, five years apart, he talks to her how he usually talked to her. When he was dreaming, or when he was half-awake, craned over a book in the library with candle wax spilling over the desk and his fingers and there was a thought of her, just outside the circle of light.

Not frightening. Just - unknowable. Dark hair, dark eyes, and that trace of a smile, when he learned to look for it; or maybe as she was at the last: sulfur and smoke, gleaming in the dark like the white of an eye.

(He'd tell her about the war. The shortages and stretched supply routes, all the little details that followed the ghost of an army and about how cold it gets, in his grandfather's house. There were- there _are_ things that he never got to share with her. Truths about herself, from the diary he'd kept, and what he thought it meant; the truth about himself; his pipe dream, and what he'd wanted to build, with _her-_ )

And now she's standing before him in the ruins of the place he last saw her, and she is - no more or less than how he remembers her.

There's that same sleepy tilt to her eyes.

She listens the same way, fingers catching at her bracer, the edge of her glove;

She looks at him and he still can't guess what she's thinking but for when she smiles, or she cries, times he can count on the fingers of one hand.

She's smiling now.

She's in a too-large peasant's tunic, with dust kicked up her leather boots and the sword of the creator heavy on her hip.

She steps towards him and he feels the air stir.

 _I've been sleeping_ , she says.

 _Ah yes_ , he replies, and it's a thought he's entertained before, in his wilder fancies.

 _It's the truth_ , she says again and somehow, he believes her, and he invites her to sit with him, a while.

She's a dream or a ghost and maybe she always has been, but she takes the bread from his hands and that is real enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's been playing this OBSESSIVELY
> 
> Claude seemed sadder, tired, post time-skip and I definitely want to explore that. I play with JP VAs btw they're SO GOOD  
> Also where are my shippy moments game WHY DO YOU BETRAY ME
> 
> sometimes you just gotta do it yourself


	2. Reunion: part 2

They sit and they eat, and the sun rises. They share a wineskin, sitting with their legs dangling over the parapet like children and the wine is warm and sickly sweet.

This was the path to the goddess's tower, once. There are now vines choking it, crumbling pieces of it into the valley below, and he remembers the fire five years ago - the impossible heat of it, how the great walls of the monastery had cracked like clay.

The tower barely stands and a section of the ramparts is in ruins. The valley floor below is burnt and buckled as if scored with a knife and Byleth stares down into it, close enough to him that he can feel how she ticks her foot against the stone.

_Has it really been five years?_

She asks the question first, and he looks out towards the familiar silhouettes of the mountains in the distance: immovable, unchanged.

I don't know, he wants to say.

He offers her the wineskin and she takes it. She takes the dried fruits he'd brought, too - she's as ravenous as he'd remembered from the aftermath of the day she changed (when even Raphael had watched with awe as she'd inhaled plates upon plates of food, that afternoon after she'd woken up).

He looks at her, gold and jade in the dawn light with his cloak drawn tightly around her shoulders and there's that impossible hope again; his breath is tight with it.

 _Do you remember the night before the ball?_ he asks instead. _In the courtyard, after the dance competition. When all of Golden Deer came together_. He feels light-headed; it must be the wine. He makes sure to choose his words, though. _You made a promise._

He's not sure why he's asking. To see if she remembered, if she'd kept that promise as close as he had? To see if the promise had mattered?

She's silent, a moment. And then: _the millennium festival. We promised to come back here._

The confirmation squeezes a little more of the room out of his chest. _And five years to the day-_ He splays out his hands and winks when she catches his eye. _Some would call that divine providence._

She cuts him a side glance. _You don't believe in gods and goddesses._

 _Don't I?_ He laughs and remembers a conversation long ago in the cool of the chapel, the light from the stained glass seeping like honey over their shoulders (“what do you believe, teach?”). She's right. He doesn't. Not exactly. _How about fate?_

She lets out a breath that could be a laugh. _I don't think_ I _believe in that._

He looks at her a little longer than he intends to.

She’s still looking out towards the ruins of the town below, her fingers clasped tightly around the edges of his cloak and he wonders how he would feel, if he had woken up and found all of this. If he had turned around and everything he’d known was changed, or in ruins, or gone - and he does believe her, he realises. Of course he does; he always has - he’s believed _in_ her. Five long years later, he knows that much.

Five years. Perhaps she’s become a better liar, the part of him that has kept him alive wonders. Or maybe she’s just forgotten. She looks unchanged; but he doesn’t really remember her _ever_ changing.

A breeze skates up the side of the rampart and clutches at their clothes, their legs.

He's let the silence sit too long.

 _What happened here?_ she asks, breaking the quiet before he can. _After the battle?_

He picks a date from the bag of dried fruit that lays abandoned between them, for something to do with his hands.

_What do you remember?_

She shrugs, bluntly and maybe a little helplessly; he can't tell.

 _The invasion. We beat back the first wave, but then - reinforcements. Beasts. And_ \- her eyes slide to his before blinking away - _the dragon._

He catalogues that glance, and his smile shows teeth. What does she know?

 _Five years ago,_ he says _._

 _So you tell me._ There's a tired crease of a smile tucked in the corners of her mouth.

_And then?_

_The cliff. That one-_ and she points at one of the rents in the ground, across the valley. _I fell, and then that's it. That's all._

And that- that hits him harder than he thought it could. 

_I wake up,_ she continues, and her voice hardly changes; _and I'm in a place I don't recognise. I washed up in the river. They gave me new clothes. My weapons. I came here, but-_

 _But it's too late. I'm-_ she stops, takes a breath, and then continues, still looking out across the valley towards the broken earth and empty chasms and suddenly, suddenly he hates that they're so close to it. _I was too late._

She turns to look at him then, and he's startled to see that her eyes are too bright, emerald. There are tears caught in her lashes.

 _I'm sorry, Claude,_ she says. _That it's taken me so long._

She blinks and a tear catches on her cheek, slipping towards her chin. She wipes it roughly away, frowning as if not quite understanding what was happening (and he can count the times he's seen her cry on the fingers of one hand).

He's moving before he has a chance to think about it. He pulls her towards him and wraps his arms around her, chilled but still warm, and his heart trips when she sags into him, her hands catching at his sides. 

_It's not too late_ , he says against the crown of her head, as if that could encompass everything that he means it to.

She fits against him in a way he'd used to wonder about when he was younger and scrawnier, still growing into his shoulders and hands. She's- softer, than he'd thought she'd be. Warm, for her lack of a heartbeat - and his own heart is beating like a drum, so heavy he feels it through the both of them.

Eventually he pulls himself away enough to rest his hands on her shoulders and give them a firm squeeze. He re-establishes a kind of distance. He'd be lying if he said that his heart was anything but sold, though. _You're here now, teach._ He winks. _That's what matters._

There's a kind of fondness in the way she looks at him, one that he remembers by candlelight in the library, tea leaves, cracked porcelain.

 _Okay_ , she says, and he smiles.


	3. Reunion: part 3

They finish their breakfast as the sun climbs the sky and Claude fills her in on the key events of the intervening years. He tells it with an energy that surprises himself, embellishing richly and often and sometimes she laughs and calls him on his bullshit and sometimes she doesn't. She looks back towards the monastery ruins as if seeing the ghosts in the corridors. She finally stops looking towards the valley.

By the time he's finished his hands are starting to freeze and his ass is numb. It's time to make a move.

He'd hoped - he'd hoped for a lot of things, the professor the most hairbrained hope of them all. And he had her. Whether the deer showed up or not, that was enough. 

He eyes the plumes of campfire smoke in the monastery courtyard - the bandits, settling down to breakfast - and then peels himself from the parapet, stamping the feeling back into his feet.

Byleth follows suit and shrugs off his cloak, shaking it out before she offers it back to him. He takes it, and is again confronted with the cheap tunic and leggings she's wearing. 

Perhaps in the Knight's quarters there'd be some plate that hadn't been plundered that would fit her. Maybe they could even find her own spare set, if the dormitories were still standing. There hadn't been much time during the evacuation of the monastery, all those years ago, and even now there were rooms that still looked as they'd been left, albeit to the mercy of nature and time.

She's looking at him, he realises, after he's finished tugging his cloak back into place. He looks up and catches her gaze and there's a strange expression on her features, one that he doesn't think he recognizes.

 _It's weird_ , she says at his inquisitive eyebrow, still scrutinising him, and he laughs at just how self-conscious that makes him feel. He directs a smile at her. It's comes more easily, naturally, than he'd admit aloud.

_What is?_

_I saw you yesterday. Or rather-_ She tilts her head, encompassing what would've been a much more elaborate hand gesture. _To me... it was yesterday. And now you're changed. A lot. It's not bad. It's just..._

Not bad. He laughs again, marveling at the beating his ego is taking.

_Your golden deer's all grown up, teach._

He twists on the spot, flourishes.

_What do you think? Did I do it well?_

She stares at him flatly before she looks away, breaking eye contact first, and he can't help if he imagines there's more colour in her cheeks than just the wine and the dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was screwing up but hopefully all okay now haha !
> 
> Did I mention it's 3am right now  
> I'm down and out with a cold WHY AM I AWAKE


End file.
